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Wall Street Journal's Google Traffic Drops 44% After Pulling Out of First Click Free (bloomberg.com)
In February, the Wall Street Journal blocked Google users from reading free articles, resulting in a fourfold increase in the rate of visitors converting into paying customers. The tradeoff, as reported by Bloomberg, is a decrease in traffic from Google. Since the WSJ ended its support for Google's "first click free" policy, traffic from Google plummeted 44 percent. From the report: Google search results are based on an algorithm that scans the internet for free content. After the Journal's free articles went behind a paywall, Google's bot only saw the first few paragraphs and started ranking them lower, limiting the Journal's viewership. Executives at the Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., argue that Google's policy is unfairly punishing them for trying to attract more digital subscribers. They want Google to treat their articles equally in search rankings, despite being behind a paywall. The Journal's experience could have implications across the news industry, where publishers are relying more on convincing readers to pay for their articles because tech giants like Google and Facebook are vacuuming up the lion's share of online advertising. Google says its "first click free" policy is good for both consumers and publishers. People want to get the news quickly and don't want to immediately encounter a paywall. Plus, if publishers let Google users sample articles for free, there's a better chance they'll end up subscribing, Google says. The tech giant likens its policy to stores allowing people to flip through newspapers and magazines before choosing which one to buy.
After what the WSJ did to Youtube (cost them 1 billion dollars) how the holy shit does WSJ still have anything to do with Google? Why didn't they delist them, ban them from adsense, and try to pretend they don't exist on the internet as payback for their bullshit?
I had subscriptions to The New York Times and Wall Street Journal for years, so the paywall situation doesn't effect me. However, I agree with the way Google prioritizes free content vs. paywall content. WSJ will have to find the sweet spot between offering free content and acquiring subscribers. Just like every other content creator on the Internet.
You cannot establish a medium (the Internet) based on free and open access and expect to convert it into a paid medium. The simple truth is that there a re million sources for news. Whether or not they are reputable doesn't matter to the mass consumer (or so it appears). If you begin to charge for content, you will only receive the small sampling of people who care about the reputation of your site. So - STOP WHINING. Geeze. This is the market people. Stop trying to fit your old broken models on the folks who were born in an era where free and open content meant they did not have to pay. Sometime I think marketing analysts should be under the age of 30. (I'm 50 and recognize this - what morons...)
They index and rank what is available. If you want something to be indexed and ranked... make it available. I've no sympathy at all for someone who wants simultaneously have and eat their cake.
The market will find a balance between monetization and reader base. I suspect it will involve giving away a complete summary and limiting subscribers to those interested in in-depth analysis.
Want to know the future? Look at what college kids are doing. When Forbes implemented their paywall the number of citations they recieved, and more importantly the number of citations the authors and articles highlighted in Forbes, dropped to almost nothing. Just look up the cite numbers at your local Alma Mater Library portal.
Forbes is dead to anyone under 28.
Now the Wall Street Journal wants to go the same route. What do these companies think will happen when potential customers grow up, go to university, get advanced degrees, and start their career without having any direct contact? They think of paywalled companies as relics of their parent's generation, doomed to die and never convert to customers.
Having a paywall is an explicit "We want our company to die with baby boomers."
So WSJ wants what is essentially free advertising for its articles. If it's so important, WSJ should pay Google with Ad Sense like every other company.
Google's search result would be trash if every other link led to a page that needs subscription. Plain and simple. Then there are those geolocked sites, too...
Why would I pay? When newspapers finally come to the realization that digital distribution has a low overhead (and we all know it) compared to print and decides to reflect that in their digital subscription pricing, I won't even consider it. Get a few thousand subscribers for $60-XXX per year or get a few million at $12 a year.
Fortunately for News Corp, all of Wall Street Journal's news is proprietary.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
For decades, sites have been falling over themselves to appear more palatable to search engines. Now REVOLT! Good for the net. Keep it up.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Support a Bitcoin payment per article then I'd be willing to pay!
Provide two versions of each story, a short form and a long form. The short form is free. And no, that isn't what they do already. What they provide now is a teaser, which is NOT a short form - it's a teaser that provides no value for those who aren't willing to subscribe or do what it takes to see the long form.
The free, short form has to provide worthwhile benefits for those who read it, and be linkable from sites like this one.
The WSJ is NOT hurting. They are gaining subscribers, and they are losing freeloaders. I will no longer read WSJ articles, but that is no loss for them, because I never paid them for anything and I never will, and I never click on the ads. Eyeballs are worth nothing if they can't be monetized.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/w...
On May 19th, WSJ published an editorial AGAINST Net Neutrality. Now, they want a provider to lean over backwards to give them better access to customers, for "fairness". LOL hypocrites.
Oh, you should really look at the WSJ closer. Despite the often-ridiculous stances of their editorial page, their news room is one of the most reputable and high quality in the business. We should be thanking them for keeping quality reporting and investigation alive in this environment.
"They want Google to treat their articles equally in search rankings, despite being behind a paywall"
When I Google I look for article(s) that I can read, not articles that I have to hand over my wallet in order to read
I only hand my wallet over to my wife
Well, you know the problem with Google's "first click free", was that if you repeatedly used incognito mode to Google search any WSJ article headline and open the link, every click turned out to be free... So the WSJ may have gotten wise to that and realized that completely cutting off people would finally get them to pony up the money.
Same for a lot of paywalls where they want to get you in the door but aren't measuring the unintended effects (cannibalizing their own subscription rate) very well....
I'd pay $1 a month, even if that only got me access to a dozen articles a month. That's about all I ever clicked through to anyway.
I get a local (electronic subscription) newspaper that meets most of my needs.
I'd sign up for WaPo, NY Times, maybe LA Times as well for $1 a month gets me a dozen.
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
I disagree.
Relevance is measured in eyeballs, not subscribers. Back in the days when I was riding the train into the city, you could tell the serious people from the unserious ones by what paper they were reading. With online, it's word of mouth, not the paper you see people with.
It's a long term death sentence to put up a paywall.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Dude nobody in finance reads the WSJ. Everyone follows Bloomberg.
The WSJ is for people who think it's a relevant source of information because it has "Wall Street" in the name. They're the same people who think that "Vitamin water" is healthier than a can of Coke.
lucm, indeed.
You think I should not write for the WSJ?
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
Bullshit. Every editorial I've read there in the last couple of years has had a strong conservative slant, just as you'd expect of a newspaper aimed predominantly at rich people (and poor people who think they're going to become rich people).
Not hurting yet, perhaps, but over time they'll find the same thing that others who've tried this have. Once you take away that first free dose, the rest of the product feels less valuable because you can't really see what you're getting. Those who subscribed before the policy will eventually age out of the system, and that churn won't be replaced by as many new customers.
It'll take a while, but eventually they'll go back on this. Wait and see.
Translation: "I saw an opinion that wouldn't fit in my safe space, so I ran away from my standard Republican-leaning news source to an alt-right-leaning news source." There's nothing liberal about the WSJ, as even a cursory glance at their editorials will reveal.
The tech giant likens its policy to stores allowing people to flip through newspapers and magazines before choosing which one to buy.
This analogy might carry more weight if there was a virtual store clerk eying you after you've been reading the same newspaper article for more than thirty seconds,
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
If there's a better argument for anti-trust investigations against Google than this, then I can't think of it.
Let me put it like this:
You want to open a telephone company or a cable company. But the thicket of laws preventing access to telephone poles either owned by the government or by another company are off limits to you by law.
You want to put in wired phones, you cannot. You have to go to the local telecom monopoly and pay them - at rates they set - to use them. You are not permitted to install your own. If you build a subdivision, you are required to install the infrastructure then pay the local telephone/cable monopoly a fee to take them over from you and you don't get any money for it.
If you want to set up cell phone towers, then you have to go, hat in hand, to the major telecoms and ask "Please sir, may I have some spectrum?" because there's not any available that aren't in the major telecom's players hands. And spectrum is sold at auction so if you want to out bid a industry with billions of dollars, please feel free. In fact, please do - I want to watch.
Google does not stop you from creating your own search engine. If you don't want Google to index your site, it's a trivial entry in the robots.txt file to let them know they are not welcome. And unlike other search engine operators, Google actually honors your explicit request to drop your site from their index and stop spidering your site.
Google invested many hundreds of thousands of man hours to create an indexing system you want to force them to give away to others. Communists do that too, you know. Force people to give up their private property, labor, and time.
I'm good with it if you disagree with Google's business model - but Google isn't stopping anyone from creating an even better search engine.
So... when are you getting started on that better search engine? Again, I wanna watch. I have popcorn.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
They probably allow access to "googlebot" just not other browers. So technically possible, but against google tos.
So what's stopping us from posing as Googlebot? Are WSJ also filtering on IPs?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., argue that Google's policy is unfairly punishing them for trying to attract more digital subscribers."
Even in theory it is impossible to "unfairly punish" Murdoch's News Corp.
Relevance is measured in eyeballs, not subscribers. Back in the days when I was riding the train into the city, you could tell the serious people from the unserious ones by what paper they were reading. With online, it's word of mouth, not the paper you see people with.
It's a long term death sentence to put up a paywall.
This was the prevailing wisdom for much of the internet's rise, but I'm not sure it's as true anymore. Despite an avalanche of media outlets, there are not too many media generators (e.g., companies that gather news, that develop original programming, etc.). The rise of Netflix and its ilk is a testament to this. I'm not going to make a prediction on the future of media, but placing bets on free content solely funded by advertising is by no means a sure bet.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Dude nobody in finance reads the WSJ. Everyone follows Bloomberg.
WSJ may be slower than Bloomberg, but they are more influential. Everyone may read Bloomberg, but when WSJ says something, they turn their head.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Google wants to index the world's information? Fine. Deciding its own policies on information retrieval and what business model it wants to promote? No bueno.
This goes to the heart of the purpose of a search engine. Should it solely return "free" results? What if those results are biased because they are ad-supported? Should they return only independent premium results? What if there is no independent source or the cost of the premium source is so high they are effectively inaccessible to the searcher?
There are a lot of difficult and interesting questions here, but no easy answers.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
I'd pay for curation of search results that blocks/advises the likes of pInterest, paywalls etc
A blog I run for the wealth
they should buy the advertisement on google.
seeriously. if they cannot view the info for free how the fuck could they index it for free and why would anyone of googles customers like that info to be there in the first place if they cannot access it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Your point is fine but that's a terrible analogy. While I do think a person can do better than Vitamin Water it has half the sugar and half the calories of Coke per serving so even if you ignore all of the added vitamins Vitamin Water is indeed healthier than a can of Coke.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
This goes to the heart of the purpose of a search engine. Should it solely return "free" results?
How about handling it the same way Google Maps deals with toll roads: let the users set their own preferences.
Hell, I'd love it if I could not only filter out paywall sites, but all sites which only exist to try to sell me shit. I don't want penis enlargement pills, clean-ur-PC software, VPN services, or amazing home business opportunities. I just want whatever free content is most relevant to what I've searched for.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I'd love it if I could not only filter out paywall sites, but all sites which only exist to try to sell me shit.
For all the wonderful business models that have developed with the internet, there are only two that have stuck: sites that get you to pay for their shit or sites that sell you other shit. If Google filtered those out, the internet would be very small.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Vitamin Water it has half the sugar and half the calories of Coke per serving so even if you ignore all of the added vitamins Vitamin Water is indeed healthier than a can of Coke.
I'll have two cans!
The editorial page leans fairly Republican. The actual reportage is substantially more liberal - though definitely in the Bloomberg/Clinton rather than the Sanders manner.
They're the same people who think that "Vitamin water" is healthier than a can of Coke.
It actually is. Next time, take a look at their calorie counts.
The search engines purpose is to locate accessible information.
Information behind a paywall is not accessible, hence should not be indexed.
As it is behind a paywall, it is up to the owner to provide their own indexing and search capability.
Simple enough for you?
Unfortunately these days it seems it is not simple enough for Google.
This is because it long ago stopped being a search system, and instead became an information aggregator, of which search is only one area of application.
Google has realised that controlling all the information is more valuable than providing an index of it, hence they are willing to participate in these games.
I have a long string of "-site:xxxxxxxxx.com" to add to pretty much any search query I use, simply to weed out the useless pages. Just add "-site:wsj.com" to yours.
I wish Google would offer the option to store such a string and add it automatically to every query you send. I'm pretty sure that information would be enlightening, also to their advertisers...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The answer is obviously the first one and a ranking algorithm is going to take relevance into account. I don't see any reason that Google owes any paywall site a free lunch. More to the point, putting paywalls high in the list risks degrades the quality of results and therefore hurts Google.
Google should tell them to GTFO. Maybe even delist paywalls entirely.
How about letting the one doing the searching decide?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
you mean, like, say, the way it was before the dot.com bubble? When there was way less content but pretty much all of it was what you were looking for, instead of having to weed out paywalled crap, blinky-ad crap and crap that will BLOW YOUR MIND?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Eh, I get my newspapers in DTF (Dead Tree Format). No digital subscription, No email spam. No need for an internet connection or electricity. Sure it costs a little more, but it can also be converted easily into a fly swatter or firelighting material.
Or emergency toilet paper.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Try wiping your ass with an iPad
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Back in the days when I was riding the train into the city, you could tell the serious people from the unserious ones by what paper they were reading.
Sir Humphrey: The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices.
Jim Hacker: Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.
I am no expert, but I am not sure that calorie counts is a valid metric for determining health qualities. I do stuff like go outside. Dense calories are good, for me. No, I don't drink much soda, but I am not sure caloric count is as great an indicator as you imply.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
What is a search engine's purpose? To find you relevant information? Or to find you less relevant free information?
If the information is trapped behind a paywall then the search engine can't find it for you. At most it can hint that it might exist. The WSJ wants to have its cake and eat it too. They basically want google to provide free advertising for them. I have no interest in a subscription to WSJ and as far as I'm concerned any results trapped behind a paywall should rightfully be lower in the rankings of relevance. If I wanted a subscription to WSJ I would already have one. If WSJ wants to trade fewer total readers for more paying readers I get that and have no problem with it. But I also have no interest in google returning search results that are trapped behind paywalls because that is approximately useless to me.
This goes to the heart of the purpose of a search engine. Should it solely return "free" results?
It should return results that I want to see.
The main news coverage was also very soft on Trump, often covered critical stories much later than other organizations and both downplayed them and softened language. I was a subscriber, it was pretty glaring.
And that same newsroom was really unhappy with editorial decisions to soften the paper's coverage of Trump during the election. The newsroom may be reputable, but what ultimately makes it to the page wasn't. Those who didn't agree were told to go work for another paper. (http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-journal-editor-trump-coverage-fake-news-2017-2)
I would like a button to permanently kill all for-pay news sites in search results and Google News: I never want to see them.
It would also be helpful if Google made it easier to remove specific news sources with a single click.
The WSJ is in bed with Wall Street (hence the name) and big business. If that's "conservative" or "Republican", then Hillary Clinton must be an arch-conservative bedrock Republican.
But the subscribers they gain aren't enough to run an organization as large as a traditional newspaper.
They are aiming for 3 million subscribers. That pays enough for a handful of talented people these days, if they are lucky.
It's like paying for porn, but a lot less fun.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since when does Wikipedia have ads, other than its pledge drive? If there are ads in articles, or ads as articles, edit them to remove soapbox content. You might be confusing Wikipedia with "Fandom powered by Wikia", a completely separate site.
Can't get you a free pony, but here's a pony for $10.
I've been shuffling soda back into my diet. This weekend, when I drank only water, I came 1,800kcal short each day. Imagine losing 5 pounds every week.
If Neanderthal man had access to 44oz Pepsi products, they wouldn't have died out.
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If there's a better argument for anti-trust investigations against Google than this, then I can't think of it.
That's because Google hasn't done anything to warrant any sort of anti-trust investigations.
Google's search results are returning worse data (robots.txt respected) because the end result has decided not to rely on ad-supported (meaning: Google AdSense supported since they have a lion's share on the industry) content rather than the website doing whatever makes sense for itself
Google serves the end user articles about the Chevy Bolt's new deals getting the batteries cheaper, and what that means for the cost of electric vehicles.
BusinessInsider, Slate, and Jalopnik have 6-page articles going into deep exploration of the recent changes in EV costs, adoption, environmental impacts, changes to manufacturing, and the resulting lower-prices, as well as what that means for the future. That's about what the end user is searching for.
WSJ only provides a link to a headline that says, "GM To Buy Chevy Bolt Batteries For $137/Cell", has a tag line, and has a single paragraph saying that GM has recently negotiated a deal to buy batteries cheaper. Then, "Click here to log into the Wall Street Journal and read this article."
On the one hand, the result a non-WSJ-subscriber gets doesn't provide the information he's looking for, and supplies less than BusinessInsider, Slate, and Jalopnik. On the other, WSJ gives the Google spider this page, so Google has no idea what WSJ's full article says. It could be a single additional paragraph that says the Bolt was originally going to cost $2,000 more but is cheaper, end of story. It could be a 9-page economic analysis of the history and future of EVs. Google doesn't know.
Clearly, Google can identify the non-WSJ sites as higher-quality information. WSJ is at best ambiguous.
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Let's be clear about something, because if we can't agree on this one simple thing, then we're also not going to agree on anything else:
Google has some mechanism where they can blacklist certain sites for malware, and their web browser (Chrome) uses this to prevent users from visiting certain sites. That is something that they could possibly use to punish someone. But that's not being alleged here.
And as for search results themselves, Google Search never has, and never will punish someone, because it lacks the capability to punish, and would still lack it even if they were a hundred times more powerful. The worst case scenario for Google searches, would be if they had search results point to pages that criticize your business. But not linking to your pages is not punishment. Failing to go to extra trouble to help someone is not punishment.
WSJ is worried about Google becoming neutral to them. They are worried that Google will stop doing helpful things FOR them. They get free cake, and would hate for the free cake to stop.
Agreed? Punishment isn't what we're talking about here. (So stop using dishonest words to describe it, unless deception is your intent.)
If you understand and totally agree to this, then we're in the same ethical galaxy and might possibly have a good discussion. Else, we have absolutely nothing in common and we probably won't even be able to communicate.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
You always have a choice. My choice is to add problem sites to my hosts file as 127.0.0.1;
This simple move serves to solve the paywall (and autoplay video, and spammy page covering ad, and junklink [try this one weird trick!], and we-don't-allow-commenting-sites, and similar) problems.
As far as the news goes, many non-paywalled sources remain. I use them.
Perhaps someday the news will move from a for-profit model to a for-the-people model. That'd make it much more worth supporting. Unless/until then... pffft.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Probably because they only run things they can fact check.
Relevance is measured in eyeballs, not subscribers. Back in the days when I was riding the train into the city, you could tell the serious people from the unserious ones by what paper they were reading. With online, it's word of mouth, not the paper you see people with.
It's a long term death sentence to put up a paywall.
I disagree, because I think you don't understand the relevance of the WSJ. They are not a website, or a paper, they are a news service for people who want to invest their money based on what is going on in the world. Such people need such a service and need it to be fact checked and reliable, because they could lose millions or even billions if based on biased or false news. If the WSJ does die, then a similar service will takes its place, and still charge money because reporting, journalism, and fact checking take money. That said, skip their editorials and never read the comments.
When Sanders was running for the Democratic nomination, the NYT, Washington Post, and Guardian - which are all more or less liberal operations - "failed to adequately report" (by which I mean intentionally downplayed) coverage of his campaign.
I don't need "news" that uses bias to push its own agenda. That's not news. That's propaganda. "Quality level" isn't just about writing well. It's also about reporting without bias. The more bias there is, the less the actual value of the source. It really doesn't matter if they have reporters on the ground if what gets in the news source is all triaged into viewpoint-addled-mush.
I do want to know what's happening. Informing me of that in a completely even-handed manner, IMHO, is the news media's only legitimate job. I'll form my own opinions on it. Since the news media is doing a very, very poor job of avoiding exactly that kind of bias, I'll keep looking elsewhere. Even a poor-grammar, poor-spelling summary of one of those articles is better if the MSM slant is edited out.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...then google's customers will stop preferring google. They may be the dominant market force right now, but things can change pretty fast in the tech industry.
Part of the reason that people use google is that they have policies stating that when a user clicks on a link, they see the same stuff that google sees. In other words, google provides the kind of search results that people tend to want. If they start favoring paywall sites over users, then upstart search engines like DuckDuckGo or whatever would be more than happy to snap those users up.
How in the exact crap it helps is that the links to paywalled sites stop working - they fail instantly (I actually generate a "this URL is disabled in hosts" page... OSX has a built-in webserver) and you're not deluged with crap like "pay me." Hit back (or whatever key combo your browser uses for back), you're back at google. No screwing with the junk sites, basically an immediate response, doesn't even have to hit the network.
Not only does this keep the offending site from sullying your browser, it doesn't even give them the courtesy of an Internet reach-around: the click never reaches their servers.
If you don't want paywalled sites, the best move is to vote with your wallet and you clicks. So don't go to them, even accidentally. This accomplishes that. Sites that misbehave are dead to you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's these things called anti-trust laws. You may have heard of them. The idea that Google is all powerful is exactly why Google is not at liberty to use its power.
As long as Google isn't specifically discriminating against WSJ it doesn't apply. It sounds like they have the same algorithm for WSJ articles as everyone else. No abuse of power here. WSJ is seemingly looking for special treatment from Google that they haven't paid Google for.
Currently many more people need to restrict calories than need to add them. There *are* those who need more calories, but it's generally better to get most (not all) of them from proteins and oils. That said, there are people with different metabolisms. But just about nobody needs sugars. The exceptions have medical problems. And even starches aren't really needed, though they are often convenient. (Just don't avoid the fiber, minerals, and vitamins. Whoops! Grains are quite a convenient package.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Indeed
lucm, indeed.
Maybe, maybe not. Without toothbrushes and all that sugar they probably would have lost their teeth before they had babies and died of malnutrition.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Oh, I'm reasonably certain that the water is healthier than the soda, I'm just not sure that using caloric count is a good way to demonstrate that. There are some not healthy foods that have few calories.
In my case, I tend to get out and do stuff. ;-) I'm pretty fit. I'm pretty grateful for this. I'm 5' 11" and 172 lbs. Yup. I'm pretty damned grateful for that - and I don't actually work at maintaining it, it just seems to happen and is probably because I'm still pretty active.
Also, I am, in no way, implying that the soda is better than the water. I'm merely pointing out that caloric value probably isn't the best way to determine if a food/drink is healthy. Nutritional content is probably a much better metric.
At least I'm pretty sure of this - again, this is not my area of study.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Depends. A lot of people can drink soda and never have a problem, even without brushing their teeth. Some people have acidic saliva and will need new teeth eventually. It has something to do with some food being acidic, I guess.
Have you ever noticed how bread tastes sweet when chewed? Your saliva breaks long-chain starches down into simple sugars. Potato is basically sugar. Likewise, most chewy sugar treats pass through your mouth rapidly without being fermented, mostly. The largest exposure is sucking candy, and even that's mostly-digested. It's comparable to complex carbohydrate intake.
Soda has carbonic acid and can soften teeth. It leeches calcium from the enamel. It doesn't etch teeth, and soda won't dissolve a tooth in any amount of time. Enamel can naturally heal from this; topical fluoride makes this happen more-rapidly, which affords the teeth more protection from physical abrasion. Much ground water contains fluoride in some concentration--often rather high concentrations.
I'm sure they could make it to at least 30. At around 15, they can have babies. Humans ate sweet, acidic things like cherries.
As for malnutrition, you overestimate how much nutrition you need. When you're burning so much raw energy, an abundance of food delivers well more than the minimum nutrition. Granted, in the case of humans, a more plant-heavy diet will greatly increase the risk of malnutrition; animal products provide a greater balance of almost all micronutrients (vitamin C is a particular exception; E is less-essential, but also more available in plants), whereas any given plant source tend to be barren of most nutrients save for any particulars (e.g. broccoli, at 8%DV per serving, is high in calcium, pretty barren in everything else; citrus fruits are high in Vitamin C; pineapple is relatively-high in magnesium; whole grains have trace amounts of everything and won't provide adequate amounts of anything without eating enormous amounts of rice and wheat).
You don't just burn off micronutrients. You can consume them metabolically, in specific ways. Building muscle will consume magnesium, for example. Once you've adapted to exertion, using that muscle burns lots of calories and consumes little magnesium.
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(sarcasm) I thought that according to Breitbart and Infowars the established "mainstream" media was part of a liberal conspiracy led by George Soros? (/sarcasm)
Surely you don't mean Bret Stephens? Who's about as liberal as Dick Cheney? Just because he's anti-Trump doesn't make him liberal, you asshat.
I think that it is a good thing for search engines to index information behind paywalls, or any other “obstruction” (for example content of printed books): that would bring us closer to a universal search tool. With paywalls, it could be done using special credentials provided to search engines by the publisher (assuming that a standard gets developed for that). That would solve the problem of the search engine downranking articles for only seeing fragments of them.
On the other hand, I’d want those same search engines to make it easy (through settings) for users to include or exclude such information (by category: paywalled, books, etc.) from the results of their search, with customisable exceptions (for example, a user might want to include results from a firewalled journal to which he subscribes but not others).
You must be fun at parties.
Excessive soda consumption is bad for your teeth. Do things effect some individuals more than others? Yes, like all things in regards to bodily health there are variations. Are there other things bad for your teeth (oh bread turns to sugars? "Neanderthal man" didnt have bread either guy), yes that is true. Are they widely available year round and consumed in place of water, like in your already absurd scenario? No.
Then you go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with our conversation and that ignores large populations of long lived vegetarians that exist today in our modern, meat heavy diet.
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Furthermore, the English got their reputation for bad teeth from the added sugar to their tea. The Irish aren't known for bad teeth because the breakdown of potatoes into sugars doesnt happen in a manner that effects teeth.
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Uh, what? Both the English and the Irish have a great number of sweets made with sugar in their historical culture. Bread puddings and potato cakes to start with. Chocolate entered Irish culture in the 1600s, and chocolate cakes are actually a staple Irish traditional dessert as far back as the 1700s.
The British first became familiar with tea in 1662.
The British also had a lot of sugary sweets throughout their diets well before tea appeared in their culture.
Can you try not making shit up? There's this thing called "reality" we like to stick to when talking about facts.
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oh bread turns to sugars? "Neanderthal man" didnt have bread either guy
Did they have fruit?! Did Neanderthals find things like peaches, gourds, or potato?! Bread isn't the only thing made out of starch!
Do things effect some individuals more than others? Yes, like all things in regards to bodily health there are variations.
You don't have bodily variations eliminating the need for 60%+ of calories.
It's impossible for Neanderthals to survive without sufficient calories, as a species. By contrast, the ones whose teeth don't rot out by the time they've raised offspring would pass on their genetics more-readily, and the species would thus have adapted as such. That was the point: a large proportion of population can actually make it pretty far eating tons of candy and sugary puddings like humans have for hundreds of years.
Then you go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with our conversation
You claim people will die of malnutrition. I gave a counterpoint about nutrition. You know nothing about nutrition.
It's highly-unlikely soda would destroy a population's capacity to survive by destroying their teeth. It's been proven sugar won't: fluoride and toothbrushes are a recent (late-1800s, early-1900s) cultural phenomena, while shitloads of sugary molasses, hard candies, chocolates, and sugar-glazed sweet breads have been frequently-consumed components of the daily diet for hundreds of years. Humans didn't die out from tooth-rot-before-their-20s.
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And none of those things were consumed at the level that tea was. Entire fortunes were made just smuggling tea into the country to avoid taxes in past centuries because it was so popular. Not so much with your other examples.
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None of your examples are as bad for teeth or consumed in place of water. The variations I'm talking about is what you brought up above, soda's effect on teeth.
Then you go on to compare a period of food scarcity to a period with relatively plentiful food? Neanderthals were chewing on bones to get to their marrow. Your comparison is irrelevant.
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